The UK Data Service aims to establish additional ways to support the long-range use of its data and resources by new generations of scholars, extending this usage through the research partnerships they develop and by the students they teach – from the earliest stages of, and throughout their career by establishing a prestigious Impact Fellows programme. Funded by the ESRC the programme aims to provide career development opportunities for scholars at a relatively early stage of their academic careers with a proven record of research.

About the UK Data Service Impact Fellows Programme

The programme takes the form of an open competition for early career researchers, including Ph.D researchers and post-doctoral researchers, with a specific focus on impact in their research, who must be using data from the UK Data Service.

Up to five awards are offered to the value of £2000 per Fellow and the programme runs over 2 years, from which Fellows can draw to cover impactful public engagement activity such as holding focus groups, international conference costs or the cost of an article processing charge for a publication.

Applications

We’ve received some excellent and topical applications from a range of disciplinary and subject areas so far, and from universities across the UK. The applicants are using a wide range of data in the UK Data Service collection in their research including (but not limited to) census micro and aggregate data, the National Pupil Database and the General Household Survey.

Matthew provides strategic direction as Director of both the UK Data Service and the UK Data Archive, based at the University of Essex. He has practical and theoretical experience in all aspects of social science and humanities data service infrastructure, having previously headed the History Data Service and served as Head of Digital Preservation and Systems at the UK Data Archive. As director he has overall responsibility for the service strategy and key stakeholder relations. He also provides leadership in data curation, archiving and preservation activities.

Victoria leads the communications and impact function of the UK Data Service and supports the Service in engaging with data users, data owners and other stakeholders internationally, developing opportunities for enhancing the impact of the UK Data Service. Victoria brings expertise in public and voluntary sector policy development, research impact management, developing open data resources and research data management, and information access rights.

Rachel Gibson: Professor of Political Science, University of Manchester

Rachel is a Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester and my research focuses on how digital technologies are changing the way in which election campaigns are fought and won. My work is comparative in nature with a particular focus on developments in the UK, the U.S., Australia and France. I have published a wide range of articles in international journals and books on this topic. I have been a Principal Investigator of the Australian Election Study since 2001 and co-directed the internet component of the British Election Study (iBES) in 2015. Outside work I enjoy the delights of country living, dog walking and the odd spot of hill running in North Wales.

Tracey leads on developing and implementing projects that support the not for profit sector to make better use of internal and external data. She project manages NPC’s data lab’s work, which enables charities to evaluate their services using government administrative data sets. NPC helped to develop the Ministry of Justice’s Justice Data Lab, and she is working to develop data labs in the areas of education, employment and health. Tracey works within the innovation and development team at NPC, and in addition to her data labs work, is currently mapping out the data ecosystem for the not for profit sector, as well as responding to data related queries from the sector.

Callum is the Principal Data Scientist for teacher supply at the Department for Education. He leads a team using a range of data science techniques to explore how teacher supply varies across the country. His most recent work includes the automated production of part of a statistical publication on teacher mobility, the first time this has been done in Government. He is also a lead on the cross-Government Social Media Research Group, which has published guidance on social media analysis and recently, in conjunction with Microsoft, run a cross-Government hackathon using social media data.

Our judges will be assessing the applications over the next few weeks, so send your application in as soon as possible. We’ll announce the Data Impact Fellows in mid – September.